8. Reasons why WhatsApp is not the right commerce platform for your business

With over 1 billion daily active users, WhatsApp undoubtedly is the most popular messaging app used by one and all for personal communication. Being free, easy-to-use, and having an enormous audience are the main reasons that attracted business owners to use ‘WhatsApp Business’ as a channel to connect with their target audience.

Many small to medium enterprises such as manufacturers and wholesalers use this platform to get in touch with the retailers, share products, take orders, answer any product-related queries, manage payments, and increase their overall sales. Though, the app has proven useful for marketing purposes but has major limitations as a commerce app.

Let’s take a deeper dive at why WhatsApp is not an ideal platform for your business:

1. Broken & Unorganized Customer Experience-When you are using WhatsApp for business purposes, it essentially calls for sharing product images with your customers on a regular basis. Here, sharing multiple products, you need to manually select each image. Plus, the whole experience is frustrating for the buyer as they receive images in an unorganized way. Good presentation of your products in a structured catalog with filters, sorting etc. enriches the browsing experience of your buyers resulting in better chances of a sale. In today’s competitive scenario you need to stand apart from all the wholesalers/manufacturers who are spamming retailers with product images daily on WhatsApp, eventually losing the interest of the buyer.

For instance, if you are a footwear wholesaler or a saree wholesaler using WhatsApp regularly for sharing product images with the buyers, the below image shows the kind of unorganized experience they receive, need we say more.

2. No Pricing Flexibility-When you are doing a business, pricing is something you can’t afford to ignore. But, with WhatsApp, you don’t get an option to play around with the prices of your products, rather you need to abide by the principle of ‘one price for all’. Again, whether it is your loyal buyer or a first-time buyer, you don’t have the option of showing any price variation. Unfortunately, in a b2b business, this is of little to no good. Here, you need a platform that allows you to take advantage of differential b2b pricing. In simple words, you can adjust the pricing of your products for a particular group of people such as repeat/loyal buyers or you may like to show reduced pricing in the form of bulk discounts.

3. No Record of Order History/Status Updates- Another drawback of using WhatsApp for business use is, you cannot keep track of order history such as details of your previous or running orders. Plus, there is no information on the order status such as active, pending, processing, shipped, canceled, etc.

4. Manual Shipping & Tracking- Another downside of using WhatsApp is, once the order is placed, you need to manually track to know about the shipping details of your package and this can be cumbersome and time-consuming. In the present digitalized age, you need to keep the customers updated at every point in time and we all know the pain associated with manual tracking. To increase the efficiency of your business, you need a platform that offers integrated shipping & tracking that allows real-time visibility from the time order is placed until it is delivered.

5. No Visibility & Analytics-Importance of analytics cannot be overlooked in any business be it a small venture or a big one. But with WhatsApp, once you share product images with your WhatsApp contacts and groups, you get zero to limited visibility into the analytics. For instance, you don’t get any insights on how many people liked or viewed products or most liked products, retailer demand patterns or your monthly sales/recurring customers, etc.

6. Single Payment Option-WhatsApp payments also come with their limitations. You only get a single payment option through UPI and it only allows peer-to-peer payments. Customers today are spoilt for choice and convenience, thus they look for multiple payment options like Credit/Debit cards, net banking, wallets then being restricted to a single payment gateway.

7. No Team Concept-On WhatsApp, when a new order is placed, the whole order handling process right from sorting, invoicing, tracking, and shipping becomes quite challenging. You need to sync multiple groups and passing on information from one team to another becomes chaotic and at times it results in delayed orders and even worse wrong orders being delivered. As your business grows, you may fall behind when handling multiple orders or a high volume of orders manually via WhatsApp. That’s why it is important to have a platform in place that streamlines your order management process. It allows multiple team logins so that different teams such as sales, accounts, and operations can work in sync with each other. Resulting in a smooth order management process that allows you to view and manage numerous orders from a single dashboard/one place. Plus, it removes all the bottlenecks and gives you complete visibility and control making order handling hassle-free.

8. No Lead Management-We all know leads are the lifeline of every business. And to engage existing buyers and reach out to new buyers, an efficient lead management process is needed. With WhatsApp there is no option of segregating and nurturing leads thus it is hard to retarget buyers. To ensure that you don’t lose potential buyers you need a platform that allows you to segregate leads on different parameters such as location, age, gender, interest, etc. Further, you can nurture these leads through retargeting and personalization. To up your business game, you need to upgrade from WhatsApp to a better platform that gives you access to all these features so that you can maximize your conversion rate.

To Wrap up

Given the comfort level, efficiency, and agility that users of different age groups have developed with WhatsApp, it is imperative for businesses to have a presence on WhatsApp to get in touch with their customers. Therefore we recommend using a combination of b2b commerce platform and WhatsApp for your business. Create an elegant store using the platform with updated products and share the store website regularly on WhatsApp, Facebook, and Instagram to draw traffic to your store. Also can use payment gateway and shipping features of the b2b platform for orders received through social media.

With Risor, you can create your free digital store on fingertips and integrate it with your WhatsApp account. Share your shop with your existing network of buyers on all the social media platforms and reach out to new buyers with a single click by joining the marketplace on Risor.